Deep in the Mountains: A Mountain Man Romance (Baby Fever Book 5) Read online

  And good God, I didn’t like what I saw at all.

  Again, I felt a wash of shame overcome me when I caught sight of Kennedy in my peripheral vision.

  I wondered what she would say if I told her my innermost thoughts after all she’d been through before she met and married Julian.

  I decided not to bring up what was really on my mind.

  We headed north on the I-95, passing through Florida by late afternoon. Kennedy had been right to leave so early, even though I had protested the idea at first. If all went according to plan, we would still be in Gatlinburg before the others on Thursday night.

  Georgia passed by in an orange grove haze and we finally stopped in Charleston, South Carolina for a break to stretch our legs after driving almost nonstop for nine hours.

  We still had about four and a half hours to go but I’d drive the rest of the way. Despite Kennedy’s bright chatter, I could tell she was getting tired.

  Kennedy went to the bathroom and I popped into the rest stop for snacks and drinks. We weren’t dieting, not this weekend. I suppose I should have enjoyed that aspect alone. I did like my food.

  My phone had been on silent most of the trip and when I reached for it, I realized with some disappointment but no real surprise, that Damien hadn’t texted.

  Maybe I should text him. Just to see how he’s doing? Did I tell him I was going away?

  I knew I was being ridiculous but even so, I couldn’t stop myself from unlocking the phone and beginning a message.

  -Hey. Just wanted to say hey.

  Before I could send it, however, Kennedy reappeared, her eyes narrowing instantly when she saw the phone in my hand.

  “Who are you texting?”

  “Gennifer,” I lied. “Just telling her we’re making good time.”

  “Uh huh.” She obviously didn’t believe me and I have to marvel at her powers of observation. “Why would she care if she’s not even coming up until tomorrow?”

  I hadn’t thought my lie through.

  “Put the phone away, honey,” Kennedy sighed, reaching for the device. She grimaced when she read the words I’d written and defensiveness shot through me.

  Why was I defending my choice to text Damien? Kennedy wasn’t my mother. I was a grown-ass adult.

  Then why did I feel like such a foolish child when she shook her head and guided me toward the counter, snatching up more snacks along the way?

  “You’ll have your entire life to talk to Damien,” Kennedy reminded me. “This is our weekend away.”

  She was right, of course.

  My entire life.

  The words filled me with an unescapable dread.

  What kind of life would that be?

  2

  Laz

  2 Years Ago

  I couldn’t concentrate on anything and it showed. Nothing was getting done, cases were piling up and paperwork spilled off my desk, unattended.

  My sergeant was being patient with me but his nerves were running thin. I didn’t need to be told that.

  Not that I could blame him. My own wits were frayed too. Helena had been at the Peninsula Hospital for almost six months and her doctors gave me no indication of how long it might be before she was released.

  Not that she was anywhere than where she needed to be—I knew that now.

  For years, I had tried to get her the help she needed, hoping to avoid this inevitable outcome but here we were.

  “Your wife has multiple diagnoses, Mr. Payne,” Dr. Ethan explained. “Bi-polar disorder with schizophrenic features, Borderline Personality Disorder and we seem to be working with alters also.”

  “Alters?” I had no idea what that meant except for more reading when I got home from the hospital.

  Reading about psychiatric disorders seemed to be part of my daily routine, stemming from the very first suicide attempt. This last one had been the final straw—both for me and for the officers, my comrades, who had responded.

  Instead of arresting her, Helena had been hauled off for observation and that was where she’d remained ever since.

  “Alternate personalities,” he explained. It took me a minute to understand what was being said and when it clicked, it really clicked.

  “She has Multiple Personality Disorder?!” That certainly explained a lot. How many times had I failed to recognize Helena when she had gone off about something? How many times had I wondered if she’d been possessed by some demon while she trashed our apartment?

  “It’s called Dissociative Identity Disorder now but it appears that she may have adopted new personalities. We are working on integrating them but that can take years, depending on how many she has.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I muttered, shaking my head in disgust. “How could I have let it get this far?”

  “I think what you’ve done is nothing short of a miracle considering what you must have lived with Helena,” Dr. Ethan assured me but it didn’t make me feel any better even though I knew that was what he was trying to do. I had failed my wife, the woman I was supposed to have protected. She had been in psychological hell and I hadn’t sought her the help she so desperately needed. Instead, I had tried to reason with her, coddling her. She’d needed professionals and I had fed the demons taking over her fragile psyche with my ignorance.

  “There’s a lot happening with Helena,” the psychiatrist continued. “It took a month just to get in deep enough to scratch the surface of her traumas.”

  “We saw doctors! Lots of them! She was on meds!” The words spilled from my lips in a rash of defensiveness. I knew I wasn’t being blamed but I couldn’t help but explain why I’d done everything I could to keep her from being sent away.

  “Like I said, Mr. Payne, this was more than a few therapy sessions deep. This is a lifetime of scarring that needs to be reopened and dealt with.”

  Scarring that I added to, I thought bitterly. I asked the question which had been weighing on me for months but had been too afraid of the answer.

  “Will she ever come home?”

  Dr. Ethan seemed uncomfortable by the query and I instantly wished I hadn’t asked. No matter what the answer was, I didn’t think it would make me happy to hear.

  “I don’t know,” she answered quietly. “My hope is yes but it’s still too soon to say for sure. It will not be any time soon.”

  The words pierced at my heart even though I’d expected them.

  Had I ever really known my wife? Was the woman I married some alter? Speaking to Helena didn’t help much either. She was far too drugged up as the doctors adjusted her dosages to make her coherent.

  Some days she stared at me blankly, like she didn’t know who I was. Others, she screamed when she saw me and I’d be asked to leave.

  Dr. Ethan explained that it would be a process but that I needed to live my own life too. It was a laughable idea. I was living in limbo, waiting for word on Helena. I attempted to throw myself into work but I wasn’t helping anyone. Not the people of Knoxville and not myself. I was a cop in name only. I had no idea how I was getting through the days.

  I knew the talk was upon me and when Sergeant Matthews called me into his office, I had foreseen it. Honestly, I was stunned it hadn’t come earlier. They had really given me all the time they could in the matter.

  That didn’t make the conversation any easier.

  “Sit down, Payne,” Matthews sighed and I did as I was told. A part of me wanted to tell him to save his breath, that I knew he was suspending me for being useless but I didn’t even have the energy to do that. I wasn’t even sure I’d raise a fight when he said the words.

  “You know why I’ve called you in here,” the sarge continued, carefully avoiding my eyes even though I kept my dark irises fixed blankly on him.

  “I have an idea,” I replied dryly. There was nothing amusing about the situation but if I didn’t keep matters light, I might scream. My whole life was falling apart around me and there was nothing I could do about it. I’d had no hand in what had happened bu
t who could I blame? Helena? Of course not—it wasn’t her fault either.

  “You’ve been through a lot these past few months,” Matthews offered. “I can’t even imagine.”

  No, you can’t, I conceded silently but I only held my eyes on him, waiting for Matthews to spit out his sentence. And it was a lot longer than a few months. This was years in the making.

  “You were dealing with a lot of shit at home too,” Matthews went on as if he was reading my mind. “Shit I didn’t even hear about until after Helena was…gone.”

  “Well, I didn’t really want the Knoxville PD to be privy to my private life,” I retorted, knowing how inane a statement that was. How many times had they responded to our apartment?

  “Be that as it may, if you’d told me, we probably could have resolved this a lot faster.”

  I gaped at Matthews, a short, contemptuous laugh escaping my full lips.

  He was blaming me for letting things get as far as they did. What the hell could he have done?

  He’s not wrong. I have no right to be defensive.

  I shoved the doubt out of my mind and leaned forward on my forearms to glare at him.

  “Are you firing me?” I demanded, wondering if I was even going to fight this. I was so damned tired. Maybe some time off from the police department wasn’t such a bad idea.

  As if I could afford not to work.

  “No,” Matthews said quickly, looking embarrassed. “I don’t really have the authority to do that anyway.”

  My jaw locked and I waited for him to finish.

  “I heard about a job that must be better suited for you than the KPD right now.”

  I blinked, thinking I’d misheard him. This didn’t sound like a suspension—it sounded like he was gearing up to fire me.

  “What?” I asked dubiously. My job was everything—the only thing I had now that Helena was gone.

  “It’s along the same lines as law enforcement,” he continued. “But you’ll have more time to yourself. You won’t be on the street and you’ll be removed from the day to day hustle of the city.”

  My brow furrowed. I couldn’t reconcile what the hell he might be talking about.

  “Undercover or something?” I asked, partially intrigued but mostly confused. And very worried.

  “Ranger.”

  “What?” I demanded again.

  “They’re looking for a Ranger in Gatlinburg. Patrolling the mountains, checking around the resorts. That sort of thing. You’ll be given a car, a cabin and other perks.”

  I started to scoff but the noise died on my lips.

  Would that be such a bad thing? Getting away to the mountains for a while?

  I thought about what he was saying.

  “I’ll write you a letter of reference if you want,” Matthews said and I refocused my eyes on him.

  “It might be good for you, Laz,” he offered in a sympathetic tone which made my heart harden. I realized then that I was a thing to be pitied around the department. They had probably been talking shit about me behind my back all this time.

  I rose abruptly from the chair and glared at him.

  “Looks like you’ve made up my mind for me,” I said, my jaw twitching as I spoke. “When do I leave?”

  “Laz, this isn’t a punishment,” Matthews grumbled. “We’re all worried about you and frankly, your partner isn’t sure you have his back if something goes wrong. You’re far too distracted with everything that’s going on with Helena.”

  My mouth parted in shock.

  I was right! They had been talking shit.

  I didn’t even know what to say. I could deny it all I wanted but the truth was, I wasn’t even sure about my own state of mind anymore. Once upon a time, being a cop had been the most important thing in the world to me. Now I’d even lost sight of that. Helena had drained me, emotionally, physically.

  “You should be talking to someone,” Matthews told me. “Surely Helena’s doctor can set you up with a good therapist too.”

  I bristled at the implication that I was losing my mind too.

  “Thanks for the advice,” I snapped. “And the job suggestion.”

  I turned to leave, my pulse racing as I moved toward the door but I couldn’t stop the idea from growing on me.

  Gatlinburg isn’t that far, after all.

  I made my way back to my station, carefully averting the eyes of my fellow officers, knowing now for certain that they looked at me as a detriment to the department.

  Ten years, I’d been a cop. Ten years, I’d sacrificed my safety for Knoxville, only to be shamed into leaving.

  I sat at my desk and reopened my email screen, for no other reason but to ignore the eyes I could feel on me. It wasn’t like I was getting any real work done anyway.

  It was then that I saw the email from a sender I didn’t know.

  With narrowed eyes, I clicked it open, feeling apprehensive like I could sense that more bad news was coming.

  I was suddenly finding it very difficult to read as I realized what it was I was looking at.

  After I finished, I sat at my desk for a long time, unmoving. Had I seen this coming too?

  I tried to think of the last time I’d had a “normal” conversation with my wife, the last time we’d made love or laughed together. I tried to think of a time when I’d looked at her as the woman I’d married and not a deeply disturbed woman who saw me as her enemy.

  I couldn’t remember those fleeting times when Helena and I had loved one another, not clearly. We’d gotten married so quickly, our connection seemingly instant but I knew now that I’d probably met her in a period of euphoric mania.

  And now she wanted a divorce.

  My instant reaction was to jump in my car and run to her, to shake some sense into her but why? Why would I do that? Wasn’t that a glimmer of relief I was feeling when I read the email?

  Honestly, I had never thought of filing for a divorce myself, not once. She was my wife, for better or worse, in sickness and health.

  Guilt and humiliation washed through me. If I granted her the divorce she was asking me for through this cold email from a lawyer she had clearly commissioned in a moment of clarity, I would be abandoning her, wouldn’t I?

  But denying her would be just as cruel for both of us.

  I closed the screen and rose again, moving back toward Matthew’s office where I entered without knocking.

  “Payne?”

  “When is the job for?” I asked, barely recognizing my voice. “When can I leave?”

  Matthews blinked at my about face and frowned slightly.

  “They’re looking for someone right away but if you need time to think about it, Laz, I’m sure I could probably buy you some time. Like a day or two.”

  “I don’t need a day or two,” I rasped. “I’m putting in my resignation. I’ll take the job.”

  Without waiting for Matthew’s response, I returned to my desk and grabbed my belongings. I didn’t say goodbye to a single soul.

  I was done with Knoxville and everyone in it, whether I liked it or not.

  3

  Ayla

  We were exhausted when we finally got to the Mountainside Resort and Spa in Gatlinburg but I had to admit, the cottage was gorgeous.

  It was bigger than anything I’d ever stayed in with my family, boasting ten bedrooms, each with their own bathrooms.

  There were two living rooms and a second-floor veranda which ran the entire length of the second floor, wrapping around. To call it a cottage was a hilarious misnomer.

  “I’m glad we have tonight to ourselves,” I sighed, flopping onto the suede sofa in front of the gas fireplace in the sitting room. A maid had already started it, even though it was a warm enough night.

  “Me too,” Kennedy agreed. “Let’s start drinking forthwith.”

  I giggled as she moved toward the wet bar and I tucked my manicured toes up under my butt as the bellhops put our bags in the bedrooms.

  “Is there anything else, ladies?�
�� the young man asked, standing by the door. I eyed him out of the corner of my eye. He was cute in an awkward kind of way.

  “No,” Kennedy replied when I didn’t answer. “We’re good.”

  She looked at me meaningfully and I leaned forward to grab my purse off the coffee table for a tip which I handed to him without moving off the couch. I was far too comfortable to move again.

  He took it with a smile and I winked at him, something that Kennedy didn’t overlook.

  “Are you flirting with our bellhop?” she demanded, thrusting a glass of wine into my hands. “He’s probably only nineteen or something!”

  “Are you suggesting that he’s too young for me?” I joked but my cheeks flushed with embarrassment as I realized I’d been caught. I really had no business looking at anyone that way, bellhop or not. I wondered if this was part of my pre-midlife crisis or whatever the hell it was I was going through.

  “I’m suggesting that you’re looking for love in all the wrong places,” Kennedy chided.

  “What’s wrong with being a bellhop?” I demanded. “He deserves as much love as any of us. You of all people shouldn’t care about status.”

  “And you of all people should know that you’re never going to bring a guy like that home to daddy because he’ll disown you.,” Kennedy remarked dryly, taking a sip of her wine. Darkness had completely fallen beyond the long, rectangular windows and I found myself staring into the star-spangled night instead of meeting Kennedy’s eyes.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means,” Kennedy sighed. “That you’re too old to go out rebelling against the man by sleeping with the hotel staff to make yourself feel more attractive. In the end, you know you’re going to do exactly what’s expected of you.”

  I balked at the implication and sat up, glaring at her slightly.

  “I don’t even know where to start with all the things wrong with that statement,” I snapped. “I’m not rebelling, I’m not old and I haven’t slept with anyone.”

  I didn’t touch on the “disappointing daddy” part because I knew she was right.